


Like Usual

by PaintedYertle



Category: Welcome to Night Vale
Genre: Drabble, Existential Crisis, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Slight fluff, slight depression
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-05-12
Updated: 2015-05-12
Packaged: 2018-03-30 05:15:06
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,204
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3924229
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/PaintedYertle/pseuds/PaintedYertle
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Some days Carlos wonders if he’s the only one who’s concerned about what he sees in Cecil, or if he’s the only one who notices at all. Noticing things seems to be a distinguishing factor of his character not only as a scientist but as a (temporary, as of now) citizen of Night Vale.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Like Usual

**Author's Note:**

> I DONE IT AFTER ALL MY YEARS OF FANDOM I WROTE AN UNIRONICALLY GAY FANFIC IT HAD TO HAPPEN IT WAS INEVITABLE. Anyway I adore Night Vale so I wrote this short little drabble. Sweeties. May do it again in the future.

          Cecil is visiting, fresh off of work, hiding all the twisted turmoil and paranoia under a grin and prepared compliments. Granted those kind gestures are difficult to overlook when delivered in that rich baritone (“Oh Carlos, judging by that disgruntled pout distinguished you must have been working extra hard today) but his emotions are radioactive in some impossible dark way that threatens those who approach. The usual. It’s why Carlos doesn’t tell him to leave when he has another possible all-nighter ahead of him. Both of them could use the company.

          Carlos is still working, always working, in the back of his head. It’s the frame of mind resulting from your living area and being located directly above your workplace.After their dinner together he had brought his laptop to the upstairs apartment for research purposes. Cecil is still there, sinking into the couch right beside Carlos, taking possession of the remote. For once he makes no comment on the content in front of him, circulating every approved channel three times until concluding Mr. and Mrs. Smith is not the worst thing on. There is a subtle downturn in the mood when the typing takes over the room.

          Some days Carlos wonders if he’s the only one who’s concerned about what he sees in Cecil, or if he’s the only one who notices at all. Noticing things seems to be a distinguishing factor of his character not only as a scientist but as a (temporary, as of now) citizen of Night Vale.

          During a commercial (“YOUR SANDWICH IS TAUNTING YOU. DEFEND YOUR TERRITORY. DEFEND YOUR INDIVIDUALITY. DEFEND YOUR NAMESAKE. DEFEND YOUR SOUL. WORDS HAVE NO MEANING AND NEITHER DOES YOUR EXISTENCE. BRIGHTNESS CAN BE SEEN ONLY ON BLACKNESS. MIRACLE WHIP.”) Cecil mutes the TV and leans closer to Carlos, shifting his weight on one arm. Glancing at the computer screen Cecil tries to comprehend the stream of data there, if what keeps Carlos’s interest could hold his too. Sometimes science manages to do just that, and when that happens there’s this burst in his head like crossing wires he is sure warnings and procedures exist that demand never touch but they connect somehow. But in this moment his eyes only register numbers and lines and graphs and unanswered questions staring back at him.

          His attention turns to Carlos’s face, something he understands much better. Carlos is concentrating, his eyes flitting to Cecil reading over his shoulder, until Cecil leans over to kiss him on the cheek. It brings a warm grin out of Carlos. This reaction goads Cecil into hopping to his knees on the couch and pressing his mouth onto his boyfriend’s neck, caressing his hair and pushing him over. The movement leads to the laptop nearly toppling over Carlos’s knees.

          “Cecil,” Carlos manages to say, catching the edge of the laptop with one hand, “That’s more than a little distracting.” Cecil pulls away, dejected, and Carlos can see that, “I promise I’ll take a break in a second. “It’s just…I have a big night tonight and I don’t want to put this off.”

          Cecil obliges, rearranging his body to his more casual position of folding his knees to the side. By the time the commercials have ended (“Spend better. Live longer. Wal-Mart.”) and Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie are back to solving their marital spouts by crashing each other’s cars Cecil feels like a child with nothing to do at the office. The sound stays off the TV, the remote having sunk between the cushions and likely harvested by the colony of feral dustbunnies beneath the couch by now. The quiet makes him more attentive. He notices how bright the glow from the sign of Big Rico’s Pizza next door through the window, fading out the stars and coloring the sky red-violet.

          Carlos has posters taped on the walls revealing in detail what most of those marks in the night sky actually are. Sometimes he takes Cecil out to the desert on the less windy evenings to for samples or maps or, he insists, other professional science purposes. Then he lies with him in the back of the truck and spins tales of the constellations and how he knows their location of each of them. Carlos continues with concepts Red Giants and White Dwarves and this “science” sounds more and more to Cecil like tantalizing folk lore that one would be ill-advised to believe.

          In the years he’s lived in this town Cecil has ventured outside in the sand wastes on his own to look up at the specks of stars hovering over him and the collective specks of sand under his shoes. He knows what he watches aren’t specks at all. The limitless distance expanding so far from his reach of sight told him this could not be a simple Night Vale fabrication. That’s when the thoughts and questions overtake Cecil, causing himself to feel like the thing to be watched and examined. Only his existence, a small figure sandwiched in specks of stars and sand, compared to what the stars might really be, was a dome of water not significant enough to be swallowed. Then a black hole that is not actually a black hole develops in his chest.

          After that revelation, he becomes bored again. He looks back to Carlos and the computer. Carlos is almost completely focused when Cecil’s arms coil around his waist. He playfully nuzzles his chest near his lap and the keys of the computer. “You’re like a cat.” Carlos says to Cecil, “A cat is what you are being right now.”

          “Mrow.” 

          When Cecil settles for hugging the upper arm, Carlos glances at him again, “That’s okay, actually.” Cecil grins, lowering his head on the shoulder. It pulls him back to the memory of their first night together at the Arby’s, only that time Cecil’s head was on the opposite shoulder.

          “Not to get too sentimental,” Cecil says, his thumb tracing over the veins and knuckles holding Carlos’s hand together, “but I cherish moments like these.”

          “Me too.” says Carlos.

          “I think about all the times this couldn’t have been. All those times you could’ve been lost for all those various reasons.”

          “So do I.”

          “And yet, here we are.”

          “Here we are.”

          Cecil closed his eyes, nuzzling his face deeper into Carlos’s neck, able to feel the pump of his veins.

          “Are you okay?” Carlos asks.

          “Right now? I’m wonderful. Infinity stars out of infinity stars for Carlos.”

          “Yeah, okay, but, when you’re not. My door is always open. Or, at least, you can call me.”

          This gets Cecil wondering, was he fretting internally over something before now? It’s one of those things he isn’t sure he remembers. Something about malfunctioning shredders and two intern funerals in one day. But right now it’s nice, feeling the warmth of their body heat together, pressing his ear to Carlos’s shoulder to listen to him subtly breathe. The sound of heartbeat and breath reaching out from layers of skin and bone and other. Though he loses track of time though he is aware of its passing, and Carlos rests his head onto Cecil’s. They’re fine for now in their little pocket of space and time.


End file.
